Maria

One-year-old Maria cried, her 5-year-old sister, Tanya, screamed, “I don’t want to die! I don’t want to die!” as her mother helped them out the window from their second-story plywood home onto a rope strung between houses and power poles into raging flood waters filled with parts of houses, cars and bodies.

Tanya’s family has lived in this poor section of Manila, Philippines where her father finds and sells scraps and recyclables to make a meager living. Now, the only possessions they have are the clothes they were wearing, some building materials that floated downstream that they are using to rebuild on their 20’x10′ spot of mud they have squatter’s rights to.

“We are Christians, Baptists, so we still have our faith and our family, it’s what counts,” Tanya’s mother said in a mix between English and Tagalog, the two national languages. “I didn’t want to go into the water, but we had no choice. We were out of air room in our upstairs and the water was still coming.”

The spot of land filled with mud and debris is where their house used to be. They are now living with friends who also lost everything but the house is still standing.

The team down here has set up some feeding assistance for this neighborhood and is assisting and training people for mud out and proper cleaning techniques.

This team consists of responders from GBR which include TBM, SBTC, Baptist Men of Kentucky and Baptist Men of Oklahoma.

Below is a picture of the street on the other side of Maria’s house as TBM begins to work.